Andrew Young, confidante to Martin Luther King, left his hotel and walked through the quiet morning to the National Mall. He worried there wouldn't be enough bathrooms. He looked for the first waves of people coming by bus, train and plane. It was Aug. 28, 1963, and King's coalition was getting ready for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

The first Tang commercials were showing on TV and false eyelashes were in vogue. Martha and the Vandellas' Heat Wave topped the charts, John F. Kennedy was president and the country reeled from the arrests of children in Birmingham, Ala., during a voting rights protest.

This was an important day for King's circle.

"We were trying to achieve a certain level of respectability," says Young, former ambassador to the United Nations and Atlanta mayor. "Even my parents, the middle-class black community, were very uncomfortable with these big marches and demonstrations."

The result was bigger than the organizers could have imagined. An estimated 250,000 people, perhaps more, spilled off the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and around the Reflecting Pool and heard King deliver a defining vision of freedom that resonates today.

On Sunday, a little more than 48 years after the "I Have a Dream" speech, President Obama is scheduled to help dedicate a memorial to King on the National Mall. Most monuments on the space in downtown Washington memorialize presidents or wars. But the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial is the first major memorial that does not. It also is the first for an African American.

On the day of the March on Washington in 1963, federal and local authorities feared a riot.

Washington's Metropolitan Police Department recruited black officers from around the country to keep tensions down. Calvin James, a detective from Jersey City, N.J., was one of them. In iconic photos of King speaking from the podium, a sliver of James' face is visible from just behind the civil rights leader.

"You would have to be there to see how many buses came," says James, 85, who retired to Philadelphia. "Each bus was placed back-to-back against another bus. There were thousands of buses all the way around, and the Mall was locked in. You couldn't get out."

The march started at about 11 a.m., the speeches in the afternoon. King and others milled about in a covered space behind the statue of Lincoln. Members of King's circle helped him tweak the speech. Harry Belafonte and folk singers Peter, Paul and Mary chatted. King joked. He ate a box lunch.

"Everybody wanted to speak early to get on the 6 o'clock news, and Martin, that didn't faze him," Young recalls. "He said, 'Whenever my turn comes, just let me know.' "

At about 3 p.m., A. Philip Randolph, chief march organizer and founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, approached the stage to introduce King.

"There was silence. You could have heard a pin drop. And then you could have heard electricity when A. Philip Randolph, in a sonorous voice, said, 'Brothers and sisters, ladies and gentlemen, now, that moment we've all been waiting for,' " remembers Clarence Jones, author of the "I Have a Dream" speech and King's lawyer and confidante.

"The place just erupted," says Jones, scholar in residence at the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.

As King spoke, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, who was sitting nearby, urged him to talk about a vision he had referenced in earlier speeches.

"Tell them about the dream, Martin," she was reported to have said, according to NPR and other news organizations.

King began speaking impromptu, his voice growing more thunderous.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," King said. "I have a dream today."

The crowd went wild.

"He put down the text, put it aside, looked out on more than 250,000 people and became transfixed, transformed," speechwriter Jones says. "Never, ever, ever had I seen him speak like that before. It was like he had an out-of-body experience."

Bob Adelman, a photographer who chronicled the Civil Rights movement, began moving toward King as he spoke because he sensed something significant was happening.

"I remember thinking when he said, 'Free at last, free at last,'" says Adelman, 80, of Miami Beach, "that the world was changing."

Meet the people

The people who stood closest to King during his "I Have a Dream" speech are familiar, if anonymous, faces from the iconic photos of that day. Police officers, a minister, an activist. Many ended up on the stage by chance. Most would never forget what they witnessed.

Interact and learn about five people who were present at the speech.

Charlie Jackson

1924 — 1999 Jersey City, N.J.

Background:

Charlie Jackson, a detective and police community relations representative from Jersey City, N.J., came to the March on Washington to work volunteer security. As King dove into his "I Have a Dream" speech, Jackson moved to King's side and is seen there on film and myriad photos of that seminal speech. Jackson is seen peering into the sky as King speaks. He later told his family the clouds in the sky had formed a cross.

He was a black man with fair skin and dark hair who looked sort of like Adam Clayton Powell, the late congressman from Harlem. He wore a folded white hat, like one you might see on a cook in a diner.

In reality the hat, like the one worn by non-violent freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi in India, symbolized peace. The man who wore it, the late Charlie Jackson, was a local hero in Jersey City, a working-class community across the Hudson River from New York.

Jackson was one of a handful of black police officers around the country tapped by the Washington police department to help guard King during that seminal moment of the civil rights movement. Authorities feared trouble might break out and thought having black officers work security would help ease tensions, says Phil Jackson, Charlie Jackson’s son. Though Jackson had met the likes of Hank Aaron, Andrew Young, Muhammad Ali and Ossie Davis as the community relations representative for Jersey City police, guarding King that day was a highlight of his life, his son says.

“He was very proud of the fact that he was chosen to stand beside such an important and powerful man,” says Phil Jackson, 61, himself a retired Jersey City police detective.

Phil Jackson says the family often teased his father about squinting at the sky on video of King’s speech. “He said ... the clouds in the sky actually formed a cross,” Phil Jackson recalls. “There was a cloud going this way and a cloud going that way and they met, and he said it must be a sign from God ... because the speech was so powerful that Martin was giving.”

Charlie Jackson, who died in 1999, was the kind of person who noticed things, his family says.

He often visited people in lower-income neighborhoods and became angry at a welfare system that he thought compelled fathers to live away from their children so the family qualified for benefits, the son recalls. Jackson would scout toy stores and groceries for throw-away items and take them to children in public housing.

“He would bring this community relations station wagon around with donations of food, and the kids would ... come running down,” Phil Jackson says. “Some of them you would actually hear say, ‘The detective’s here. We’re going to get something to eat.’”

Phil Jackson describes his father as a meticulous detective who became one of only a handful of black officers to rise to the post. Charlie Jackson collected 23 policing awards.

Says Phil Jackson, “Every time you see something on television or on the news or even hear the speech from Martin Luther King, we think of my father.”

Mildred Robbins Leet

1922 — 2011 New York, N.Y.

Background:

Mildred Robbins Leet quietly stole out of her home in New York City to attend the March on Washington. She knew her husband would not approve. She was back home in time for dinner. Later, with a second husband, she would found a global non-profit organization to assist the poor with start-up businesses.

Her Story:

Mildred Robbins Leet's first husband liked things just so in his household and would have never gone for the idea of her running off to the nation's capital to the March on Washington. So she went without telling him.

In photos from the famous gathering, the fugitive Leet appears thoughtful and pensive. She is sitting just a few feet from Martin Luther King as he delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech, but she is looking down. She seems to be thinking about his words.

It is a mystery how Robbins Leet, a lifelong New York-based humanitarian and activist who died in May at the age of 88, came to be on the stand with King on that day in August 1963. But to one of her daughters, it makes sense because Robbins Leet was an avid supporter of civil rights. Robbins Leet launched or helped launch several humanitarian organizations, including Trickle Up, an organization that funds start-up small businesses. She also was active in Democratic politics and was a close friend of the late Wilbert Tatum, the longtime publisher of the New York Amsterdam News, a prominent black-oriented newspaper.

"She said it was the most thrilling day of her life," remembers Robbins Leet's daughter, Aileen Robbins, of New York. "That photo was on the piano for the rest of her life. That was one of the great moments in her personal history."

It was a personal history guided by her caring for the underserved, her daughter said. Robbins Leet's website reflects this, with photo after photo of the activist with women in various Third World countries.

Robbins Leet was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and had always gone against the grain, her daughter says. As a young girl, she insisted on a subscription to The New Republic even though her father thought it was a "leftist commie rag," Aileen Robbins says.

Robbins Leet rebelled against her parents and got married at 18, leaving the house. When the March on Washington took place, Leet made sure she was there. But knowing that her husband would not approve, she made sure she was back home in time for dinner.

"She downplayed it," remembers Aileen Robbins, who was 13 at the time. "She just said, 'Oh, I was in Washington today,' because she knew my father and grandparents would have been upset."

In 1979, Robbins Leet founded Trickle Up with her second husband, the late Glen Leet. The organization provides seed capital grants and training to women worldwide to help them start small businesses. In 1989, she received a Woman of the World Award from the late Princess Diana. She helped found or lead many organizations, including the U.S. Committee for the United Nations Development Fund for Women and United Cerebral Palsy. She was vice president of the International Council of Women as well as the United Nations representative for the National Council of Women of the USA. She also helped fund scholarships for orphaned African girls.

Robbins Leet and her second husband kept their optimism, even after a lifetime of seeing injustice in the world, Aileen Robbins says.

"You know when you first got to college you were very idealistic - that's what they were like at 80 years of age; they just never lost that," Robbins says. "She thought she could change things and she did."

Calvin James

Born 1926 Brunswick, Va.

Background:

Calvin James was a detective in Jersey City, N.J., when Washington's Metropolitan Police Department put out the call for volunteer black police officers to help keep the peace at the March on Washington. Officials feared black people would riot. When James arrived, he was ordered not to leave King's side. The civil rights leader reminded James of a brother-in-law who'd fought the establishment in the segregated South.

His Story:

Calvin James, 85, grew up in Brunswick, Va. It was a place where cars chased blacks off the roads as they walked from place to place, where Klan members didn’t bother with sheets.

“They didn’t hide,” James says. “You couldn’t vote. We had to do business with them or move out of the county.”

But James had a brother-in-law who stood up to the establishment and was an active NAACP member — even after crosses were burned on his lawn.

James was remembering his late brother-in-law as he guarded Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington. On that day in August 1963, James was a detective with the Jersey City, N.J., police. He was part of a group of black officers from around the country recruited by Washington’s police department to help keep the peace. Officials feared such a large group of black Americans would start a riot.

James spent hours with King — an inspector with Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department ordered him not to leave King’s side. He told King that his mannerisms reminded him of his brother-in-law, who died roughly a year before the march.

“I told Dr. King it was just like they were both together,” James remembers. “I said, ‘You and him could go for brothers.’”

He remembers King had a confidence, a swagger about him, and that he liked to joke. A lot of people were vying for his attention as his confidantes repeatedly tweaked his speech.

Before then, James had few feelings about King and his work, but seeing King up close helped him begin to believe that the world could change.

“It made me look at things differently,” James says. “You could see the path was opening. They started letting people stay in hotels. I remember when I was in New Jersey and wanted to drive south , you had to have enough gas to get through Maryland. You had to bring a shoebox with chicken in it.”

James’ family moved from Virginia to New Jersey when he was 16. From there, he was drafted by the Navy and served in the Pacific for almost two years. He remembers that in the mess hall there was one line marked “colored” and another marked “white.” He has one particularly stinging memory from Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

“I was there Christmas Day, 1944,” James says. “Blacks couldn’t go onto Waikiki Beach unless you had a pass. That’s where all the big hotels were. I said, ‘I don’t want to go back to Hawaii anymore.’”

James joined the Jersey City Police Department in 1956. As a member of the homicide squad, he sometimes knocked on doors to find witnesses.

“If I went by myself, I had the door slammed in my face,” he said. If he went with a white partner, they were let into the home.

James retired in 1988 and moved to Philadelphia in 1991. His first wife died and he remarried. His life is quiet now. He credits the March on Washington with helping to push forward federal civil rights legislation.

Standing next to King has been a highlight of his life, James says.

“I could feel my brother-in-law in him.”

Stephen Liptak

1934 — 2000 Pittsburgh

Background:

Stephen Liptak was an officer with Washington's Metropolitan Police Department at the time of the March on Washington. He was assigned to guard King that day and is visible in many photos standing watch behind the civil rights leader. Though Liptak's family would get excited each year around King's birthday, when TV aired video of "I Have a Dream" and Liptak was visible, Liptak rarely talked about that day. He just liked to help people, his family said.

His Story:

In the space of a generation, Stephen Liptak went from being a student at an overwhelmingly white high school in 1950s Pittsburgh to standing inches from Martin Luther King during his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.

In one head-on photo of King at the lectern, there is Liptak right behind King. Liptak is wearing his uniform for the Washington Metropolitan Police Department. Just his eyes and police cap are visible as he looks into the crowd to protect the civil rights leader.

After that historic day in 1963, Liptak would go on to work with other high-profile figures, serving with the Secret Service and providing security for presidents Johnson, Nixon and Ford before retiring . He was stationed at the White House during the Watergate scandal and once accompanied President Nixon to San Clemente, Calif.

Despite his exposure to history, Liptak, who died in 2000, was a simple man who loved his wife's homemade spaghetti sauce and peach pie, British comedy and betting on horses . He rarely discussed his police work at home, his family says. In fact, practically the only time "I Have a Dream" was mentioned around the house was around King's birthday, when television stations would replay the speech and family members would excitedly point out Liptak.

"It was more about that was his job," says his daughter, Liana Liptak, 39, of Arnold, Md. "I mean, he liked all aspects of his job, protecting people."

Liptak grew up in Pittsburgh, distinguishing himself in high school as homeroom president and a swimmer. In his 1953 yearbook, his classmates teased that he was a "fish." There are few black faces in his yearbook.

Liptak served as an Army paratrooper out of Fort Bragg, N.C., before moving to Washington. He joined the Metropolitan Police Department in 1957, during a time when the district boasted a growing and relatively prosperous black population, but also struggled under continued segregation in public facilities, schools and housing. Six years later, he was assigned to cover King during the March on Washington.

"He told me that it was a very tense day and that was in August, everybody was really hot," says his widow, Alethea Liptak.

Abraham Woods Jr.

1928 — 2008 Birmingham, Ala.

Background:

Rev. Abraham Woods, a minister and activist from Birmingham, Ala., became friends with King when they were students at Morehouse College in Atlanta. Woods became so involved in helping to plan the March on Washington that he set aside his work toward a Ph.D. Woods, who pushed for investigations that led to two convictions in the 1963 church bombing that killed four little girls, shunned the limelight. But a sliver of his face is visible in one photo of King delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech.

His Story:

For all the social changes that the late Rev. Abraham Woods Jr. helped bring about during the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Ala., he shied away from the limelight, his children say.

That may be why it is difficult to find photos of Woods during Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in August 1963. But in one straight-on photo of King, there is a sliver of Woods’ face, looking out into the crowd from just behind King’s left shoulder.

Woods’ children say he was a deeply religious man who taught his children humility.

“He lived within his means; he always gave back,” says his son, Abraham Woods III, 60, a physician in Orlando. “He made us understand the meaning of giving and being caretakers, but not being greedy.”

The younger Woods tells of his father introducing him to King at a local church. King asked the younger Woods, about 10 at the time, what he would do if he saw the Ku Klux Klan marching through town. The boy told King — an advocate of non-violence — that he would hit them in the head with rocks.

“King said to my father, ‘Hey, talk to your boy now,’” the younger Woods remembers. “My father took it really hard. He said, ‘Abraham, how could you embarrass me like that?’ ”

Sharon Woodruff, one of Woods’ daughters, remembers a special feeling she would get as a toddler when she was around her father and his compatriots: Jesse Jackson, James Bevel and Andrew Young.

“There was the presence of the Lord on them,” says Woodruff, 55, a children’s case manager in Atlanta. “It was the glory. All of them talked about the glory.”

Woods, a Birmingham native, led voter registration drives and lunch counter sit-ins in Birmingham. He was energized about the March on Washington, his son remembers.

“He sacrificed his Ph.D. for this,” Abraham Woods III says of his father’s pursuit of Civil War history studies. “He got so wound up in this march. That man, he was a straight-A graduate student at the University of Alabama and he put it on hold to complete his work with the movement. He never went back to do the dissertation.”

With the march considered a success, Woods continued his civil rights work in Alabama. His campaign for a new investigation into the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four little girls led to the conviction of two Ku Klux Klan members. In 1990, he led protests against the then-segregated Shoal Creek Golf and Country Club that was to be the site of that year’s PGA Championship, prompting major corporations to withdraw advertising from TV coverage and motivating the club to open its doors to black members.

His children said one of his most gratifying moments came in 2008, when President Obama was elected. He watched television coverage from a hospital bed, where he lay dying of cancer.